


Worst Case Scenario

by Xparrot



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Drama, Gen, Mad Science, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-29
Updated: 2005-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An experiment gone awry sends Kaiba through time to unexpected, unacceptable future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three decades later

**Author's Note:**

> I hereby state that this is _entirely _Gnine's fault. She invented and laid the whole plot out to me, early one morning after a long night of marathoning, and then I had no choice but to write it. (Said plot having been adapted in turn from a favorite episode of Darkwing Duck.) So the words are mine, but the majority of the ideas are hers.
> 
> _Nii-sama_: elder brother. In the Japanese version, Mokuba never calls Seto anything else

_"Nii-sama!"_

Kaiba jerked up his head, but there were close, high walls where there had only been empty space an instant before, and the vertigo was so great that he staggered, put his hand against the wall to steady himself while he swallowed back the remains of breakfast rising in his throat. Rough brick under his fingers, when the walls should be white and smooth.

"Mokuba?" he coughed, keeping his eyes closed until the dizzy nausea settled. His brother's cry was still ringing in his ears, but there was no answer now.

A brilliant white flash, afterimages dancing behind his lids, and the smell of something burning--fire? Kaiba forced open his eyes. The brick wall in front of him slowly slid into focus. Dirty pavement under his boots, scattered with trash, crumpled beer cans and gum wrappers.

Obviously a back alley, somewhere. But he had been in the lab. Had been in the laboratory all day, most of the last week, actually. Perfecting...

"Hey, are you okay?"

Kaiba squinted into the sunlight at the young woman standing in the mouth of the alley, peering at him as he slumped against the wall like a weak-kneed inebriate. "Mind your own business," he snarled at her.

The lab, he reboarded his train of thought, after the woman had beaten a hasty retreat. Mokuba had been monitoring behind the protective glass. Watching closely, and then...the instruments beeped a warning, bright flames--but Kaiba felt no burns, and the trim of his white trenchcoat wasn't singed.

His legs felt steadier, so he pushed off the wall and straightened up. As he lowered his arms he caught sight of the device on his wrist, raised it before his eyes. The rush of returning memory was almost as dizzying as his sudden displacement. Of course.

The ignorant might have mistaken the device for a new version of duel disk, though it was significantly smaller, and only had slots enough for three cards. All were empty now, though when he looked closer, faint scorching marked the middle slot. Kaiba nodded to himself. Not an unexpected reaction.

Yugi might go on about the heart of the cards, but Kaiba couldn't care less about whatever imaginary spirits might inhabit his deck. What had fascinated him, from the moment he had first seen the monsters brought to life in that mortal game so long ago, was the _power_ of the cards. The god cards had been the most spectacular manifestation, of course. He had designed the duel disks, he knew their workings precisely, and those gigantic materializations had been quite impossible within the limits of the holographic technology. But the more he had played, the more he realized the force inherent in all cards.

Superstitious fools called it magic, but that was just a label to be stuck on any phenomenon they lacked the mental breadth to comprehend. The duel monster cards had been created by man; whatever unknown energies they tapped, that power must be within mankind's ability to grasp. So naturally he reached for it.

The newly constructed card disk on his wrist wouldn't be much use in a duel, but it wasn't designed for such. Kaiba hoped it might have other applications in games eventually, but for now it was only an experiment. The electronics jammed into the device weren't intended for projection or display, but simulation, evoking the instance of a duel when there was no play actually occurring. When the cards set inside it were activated, their power wouldn't be applied to any specific incident of attack, but to the player himself. Making, in effect, the illusions of the game into tangible reality.

It was, Kaiba had remarked some weeks ago, a patently ridiculous notion. Mokuba had just nodded and grinned and said it would be awesome, and had started inventing possible variant games that could employ such technology.

For their first test, Kaiba had decided from the start not to use a standard monster card, no matter how enticing the thought of a Blue Eyes White Dragon in the flesh might be. After the god cards, the power of the monsters was a proven force. Better to see if a more unknown quantity could be tapped. He had selected the test card mostly because its power was so unlikely, so beyond even the advances of modern science, that if he could succeed with it he would be confident in using any of the others.

Kaiba didn't have a Time Wizard in his deck; he didn't care for gamble cards. A mediocre duelist like Yugi's friend might need luck to finagle a win, but Kaiba had never relied on anything but his own strength and skill. But for this experiment, the Wizard's so-called "Time Magic" was ideal.

Obtaining two Time Wizards had been easy enough; the card was not so rare as to be terribly expensive. Completing the new disk had been a more complicated matter, but the finishing touches had been put on it last night, and he and Mokuba had spent the morning prepping the lab, double-checking all monitors and recorders to make sure no data would be lost. Everything had been in perfect order.

Still, Kaiba had had to consciously still the tremor in his hands as he had fitted the card into the slot, standing in the center of the white-walled test room. Mokuba's eyes behind the glass had opened wide, and they had both held their breath, as Kaiba pushed the card in, activating it.

And then--the light, that sense of fire. His brother, abandoning his post as he ran for the door into the testing room, shouting warning.

And now this a narrow alley, brick buildings towering above him.

Kaiba had calculated carefully. He had intended a jump of no more than an hour, a quick hop forward in time, just to see if it were possible. By all known laws of physics it should not have been. He had figured with seventy-six percent surety that there would be no effect at all.

Time magic. Ridiculous.

But he sure as hell wasn't in his lab anymore.

That in itself was problematic. According to his calculations, some spatial displacement was to be expected; gravity could only fix an object in relative place so much. But a journey an hour forward should have moved him hardly a millimeter. He should still be in the lab, practically where he had left. Not a kilometer or more away.

If he had moved so far spatially, how far might he have traveled temporally?

The woman had spoken Japanese, at least, so he was still in the right nation. But her fashion had been--strange. Not that he was much in the habit of noticing women's clothing. But coordinating skin tone to match one's blue jeans wasn't a style he recalled from visits to Kaiba Lands.

With unnatural trepidation Kaiba moved to the mouth of the alley, took a breath and stepped into the sunlit street. None of the people passing by gave him more than a second glance, as he strode to the corner and looked up and down the block.

The automobiles were the first thing he noticed, boxy where they should be curved and smooth where there should be corners. At least they were all still on the ground--he shook his head, casting out the refuse visions of a few bad SF movie futures. The skyline was different, too, taller, but he recognized enough structures to know this was still Domino City, and he was perhaps three kilometers from his lab.

How many years away, however?

Kaiba moved down the street with the flow of scooters and pedestrians--the crowd as a whole was taller, as nutritionists had been predicting, but he was still tall enough to see over most of their heads--doing his best not to rubberneck like a damned tourist and mostly succeeding. He passed a bank, stopped and cupped his hands around the window glass to peer inside.

The bank clock behind the tellers' counter gave the day, month, and year as well as the time. He stared at it for a good long minute. Somehow the streets of strangely dressed people and unusual cars were easier to accept than those standard red LED numbers, telling him it was some twenty-six minutes, four hours, eleven days, two months, and thirty-two years later than the date blinking on his own watch.

He finally pushed away from the window, pushed down his sleeve so it covered the traitorous watch. Looked around the street, took a breath of air--it smelled and tasted cleaner than the usual atmosphere downtown; environmental precautions must be working in the future.

This future. This present. Three decades later than the now he knew.

Completely, patently impossible. A century of physicists would be rolling over in their graves.

Kaiba threw back his head and laughed aloud.

A couple passerbys glanced over and changed the course of their hurried strides to veer around him. Kaiba met their disturbed looks with a direct stare, enjoying their incomprehension. Though it wouldn't do to draw too much attention to himself.

Seized by a sudden impulse, he turned on his heel and strode back the way he had come. It should be visible between those two skyscrapers--yes, there it was. Kaiba Corporation's headquarters had gained a few additions in the intervening decades, but still stood as one of the tallest buildings in the city, and the top structure was unchanged, as was the KC logo, glittering in the sun. And that building next to it must be an expanded Kaiba Land. Open, and busy, from the many tiny figures he could see waving from the rides on the roof. He smiled.

Kaiba Seto might be at headquarters this very moment, in the top office. Or in that Kaiba Land, or any of the others--he wondered how many there were worldwide by now. Hundreds, if everything had gone according to plan.

Kaiba knew better than to hike over and ask. He had no way of knowing how much he might have changed in thirty years, but there was a chance he might still be recognized. And he would prefer not to risk encountering himself. Potential temporal paradoxes aside, he knew himself well enough to know that meeting a younger, obnoxious, and scientifically impossible version of himself would be low on any day's agenda. Though of course if he remembered this day...well, if Kaiba Seto of the future wanted to go looking for himself, that was all very well, but he wasn't going to walk blindly into his own hands.

Kaiba reached up to his coat's lapel, tore off the communicator with the identifying KC logo and stowed it in a pocket of his black jeans. Then he withdrew a small, flat case from another compartment in his coat and stepped under a store's awning, out of the flow of pedestrians.

He hadn't been surprised to see the Time Magician card no longer set in the disk on his wrist. If the activation energies hadn't destroyed it, which had been a likely possibility, then it probably would have stayed back in the lab, where and when he had used it to cast its powers on him. He was counting on that. His initial plan wouldn't have required him to travel back, since a lost hour wouldn't have been a great hassle. But he had foreseen this worst case scenario. A second use of the card would cancel out the previous effect; activating the Time Wizard again would pull him back through time to where he had started, returning him directly to the lab at the moment he had left.

The original card might be lost, but he had bought two for that reason. Inserting any Time Wizard card would do. He had triple-tested to make sure both were genuine, not one of the Ghouls' fake rare cards that were still floating around the market, so it should work without a hitch. When he decided to go back, he would just need to activate it. Location shouldn't matter; the attraction between the parallel cards should override the physical as well as the temporal distance. He could spend a few more hours sightseeing--any longer would be tempting fate--and then return.

Mokuba would probably regret that he hadn't brought a camera.

Lightheaded, almost giddy, breathing this strange clean air of the future, Kaiba flipped open the single card case holding his other Time Wizard card. And froze.

The case was empty.

Where the card should be was only a thin layer of dust. Ash.

The white flames, flickering bright around him.

There must have been some kind of reaction between the cards, an inadvertent activation of both copies. Destroying both, or leaving them back in the past?

Kaiba plunged his hand into his breast pocket, felt for his deck. Those cards were still intact, undamaged, and he released his held breath.

But he had no Time Wizard in his deck.

And without a Time Wizard, he had no way of traveling back through time to the past which was his home.


	2. A different kind of card game

Kaiba scanned the windows of the shop and the sign over the door one more time, making absolutely sure there was no turtle logo.

This wasn't a game shop he knew; in his time this block hadn't been zoned for retail. And it was across the city from the original site of the Kame Game shop, but who was to say the Mutou family hadn't expanded their business? The last thing he wanted to do was to walk into this shop and bump into Yugi. Thirty years younger though Kaiba might be, he had no doubts that Yugi would recognize him instantly. And Yugi would likely want to share the news of his arrival with all his friends, however many hundreds he had surely managed to accumulate by now. Not to mention Yugi would almost certainly be sympathetic and eager to help Kaiba out.

As if he would need charity, just because he happened to be a few decades ahead of when he should be. It was hardly that terrible a predicament. All he needed was to find a Time Wizard. Even if the card was long out of production, there must be some available, in private collections if nowhere else. Kaiba didn't have money here; the bills in his wallet were probably obsolete, and the credit cards of course long since expired. But with a complete deck of original run cards to trade, he would surely be able to arrange something. So he had sought out the sort of small, specialized hobby and game shop that was sure to carry older cards. If they didn't have a Time Wizard on hand, they should have the connections he would need to obtain one.

Having verified that the shop wasn't Yugi's--hopefully--Kaiba entered. The blond man behind the counter called a welcome, as Kaiba pushed past the two chubby girls standing by the entrance, chattering over the miniature figures in the front display. The shop had only four aisles, and Kaiba paced up and down them, scanning the shelves.

He found decks of regular playing cards, and sports cards and idol cards, and new boxes of a limited edition holographic Dungeon Dice Monsters set, and even a few unopened Capsule Monsters. But no Duel Monster packs. Kaiba frowned and searched the shelves more carefully. The shop was small but well-stocked. There was even a shelf of Monster Fighters, gathering dust, the plastic figures discolored with age. And old handheld electronic games and digital pets that would have been outdated even back in his time.

But not a single card of one of the most successful games of all time. Nor any duel disks or collector guides or other accessories. As if Duel Monsters had been a fad so short-lived that even this shrine to pathetic obsession couldn't see fit to remember it. Or maybe it had gotten too big for such a shop to afford it? Perhaps he should have tried a more elite gamers haven. Kaiba Land might have an outlet, awkward as going there might prove to be.

"Can I help you, sir?"

Kaiba looked over his shoulder, saw the shop clerk watching him curiously. On the verge of snapping a negative, he shook his head instead and approached the counter. It would be simplest just to get this out of the way. "I'm looking for cards."

"Sure, how many decks? Standard, or any kind of special edition? We just got a nice set of old anime prints--"

"Not those cards," Kaiba said. "A different kind of card game."

The man, who had started sliding open the glass cabinet, straightened up again, laid his hands flat on the counter and met Kaiba's eyes. "What kind of game do you mean?" he asked, slowly, but with a certain edginess.

"A battle game," Kaiba said.

"I see," the man said, in that same careful tone, like he was suddenly speaking in code, decrypting words in his head. "Well, perhaps you could play with these." He placed on the counter a short deck, face down. Not Duel Monsters; the back was wrong, a more complicated design of celtic knots.

Kaiba flipped the first card over, and frowned at the oddly adorned six of clubs. "Not playing cards," he said. "I'm talking about cards like these," and reaching into his pocket he took out his deck, drew the top card and held the Blue Eyes White Dragon up before the clerk's eyes. "They're called Duel Monsters. Do you have any?"

He would have been unsurprised, if disappointed, to get no response whatsoever. He was more expecting a little recognition, however slight, at least an acknowledgment of having seen something of the sort.

Instead the clerk's face went sheet white, and his hand darted out. Kaiba pulled back, thinking he was grabbing for the card, but the man grasped his wrist instead, tight like a vise, and then Kaiba found himself getting yanked behind the counter.

"What the--" He wrenched his arm free, but before he could protest further, the clerk planted both hands on his back and shoved him stumbling into the storage room at the back of the store.

"It's okay, just sit down, I'll be right back," he was ordered, and then the door slammed shut. Behind it, Kaiba heard the clerk babbling to the two girls who were the only other customers, saying something about the shop closing for a dinner break and could they come back in an hour.

It gave Kaiba enough time to flip through his deck and pull out his three Blue Eyes. He stowed them in the card case which had held the second Time Wizard, and had pocketed the case, as well as taken off his duel disk and also folded it away, by the time the man entered again.

"Sorry about that," the clerk said, only to immediately belie that apology by locking the storeroom's only door behind him, shutting them both in.

Kaiba studied his unexpected captor. He looked to be mid-twenties, a few centimeters shy of Kaiba's height and built a little heavier, but not so brawny that it would be so hard to flip him. And his wavy blond hair was long enough to fall in his eyes, which might be all the distraction he'd need. Kaiba unfolded his arms and rocked back a step, seemingly casually, in truth setting his stance for a rush.

The clerk didn't approach, however. "Calm down, kid," he said, "I swear, I'm not gonna do anything to you. Sorry if I freaked you out, but you were waving those cards around like you didn't know what you got, and if someone had come in--I don't think those girls noticed, but we get a lot of serious gamer types in here."

He sat down at the small table squeezed between stacks of cardboard boxes, motioned Kaiba to do the same while saying, "It's okay, I've put the sign out now, so we won't be disturbed. I'm on shift alone for the next three hours, so we have time."

Kaiba pulled out the second folding chair, took a seat. His knees bumped against the bottom of the table as he crossed his legs, set his hands on his lap. He still held his deck, fingers folded tight around the cards, sliding a little against each other. "So," he said, "these cards are worth something?"

"_Worth something_?" The clerk blinked. "Damn, you really don't know what you have, do you."

_I surely understand better than a boneheaded idiot who offers playing cards when asked for a fighting game_\--but Kaiba swallowed his irritation, schooled his features into politely blank ignorance. "They were my father's," he lied. "He passed away some time ago, and when I was going through his things recently, I found them."

"Found them." The man snorted. "Unbelievable."

Kaiba narrowed his eyes. "Would you require a copy of the death certificate?"

"No, I'm not saying you're lying," the clerk said. "It's just, with those cards, it's more like they found you. Listen," and he leaned across the table to catch Kaiba's gaze. "You don't have any reason to listen to me, I know, but you want my advice--don't sell those cards. You asked if they were worth something. The answer's hell yes. And they're worth money, too. I won't lie--you sure as hell could get some major bucks for 'em, but if your dad managed to keep them safe for this long, he had damn good reason. If I were you I wouldn't sell them for anything."

Kaiba blinked. "I wasn't intending to sell them," he said, honesty coming faster and easier than the bluff, and paused, trying to figure out the best story to explain his true intention without giving any more away.

"Well. Good." The clerk tilted back in his chair, then rocked forward again, fingers drumming on the tabletop anxiously. "Okay, you don't have to if you don't want to, but--could I see them? The deck? I swear, I won't be nicking any of them or nothing. Just want to know what you're dealing with."

His brown eyes were guileless, suspiciously so, but it might be the fastest way to get the man to open up and explain, and it would buy time for Kaiba to refine his story. Kaiba raised his hands from his lap, set his deck on the table and slid it across.

The clerk didn't touch the cards immediately, just looked down at them for several long seconds, holding his breath as if an exhalation might accidentally blow them away. Then he wiped his sweating hands on his t-shirt and picked up the deck, carefully.

More than carefully. Kaiba watched, intrigued in spite of himself. For all Yugi went on about the heart of the cards, for all the power of the god cards, for all the respect a true duelist should have for their deck, he had never seen anyone handle their cards so cautiously, so gently. The clerk turned the deck over slowly, then lifted the cards one by one to examine each in turn, eyes traveling over the text and art with such severe concentration he was expressionless, before setting them down on the pile. Even the master collectors who cared more for their prizes' condition than the actual game didn't treat them so conscientiously. Reverently, as if he were touching something holy.

When the clerk put down the final card, he rested his hand over the deck like a duelist signifying a surrender, and let go a long, sighing breath. Then he raised his gaze to Kaiba's. "Thank you," he said, so earnestly that Kaiba only nodded.

"Your father," the blond man said, "must have been one hell of a duelist. This is an incredibly powerful deck, it's almost perfectly balanced. Except it's three cards short. Monsters, I'd think. Strong ones, likely, there's enough lower levels for the sacrifices." He continued to look at Kaiba. Kaiba stared back, levelly, as the clerk asked, "The card you showed me in the store, which one was it? I didn't get a good look at it before."

Kaiba shrugged. "It was simply the first card I picked up," he said. Reaching across the table he reclaimed his deck, sorted through it and pulled out one card. "It was this one, I think?"

The clerk peered at it. "Twilight Zone Dragon?" He cocked his head. "Yeah, maybe that was it." But he kept looking at the card for a moment longer than Kaiba cared for.

He slid the dragon back into the deck, folded his hands over it. "You said this deck was incomplete. That would explain my father's request. He left a letter with the cards."

"Oh?" the clerk asked, distracted and curious.

"He wanted me to find another card," Kaiba said. "A specific card that he had tried to get before, I suppose, and hadn't managed. I came to your store today in hopes of fulfilling his wish."

"You're looking for more Duel Monster cards."

"Just one," Kaiba said. "It's called a Time Wizard, have you heard of it?"

The blond man nodded. "Yeah. Good card." He frowned. "Odd choice, though, for that deck."

"I don't know why he wanted it, but I'm sure my father had his reasons. Would you know where I could find one? Maybe find someone willing to trade some of these for it, if there's none for sale?"

"Willing to trade... Damn." The clerk sighed. "You really don't know, do you."

"Know what?" Kaiba asked sharply, losing his patience and not bothering to retrieve it. He'd had enough of vague allusions and run-arounds.

"I'm sorry, kid." The man's expression was all superfluous compassion. "You won't be able to find that card anywhere. That card, or any others." He pointed to the deck. "Those are the first I've seen in over a decade," he said. "They're the first I've even heard about for years."

"What are you saying?" Kaiba grated.

"Except for those cards there," the blond man said, "there's none left. Kaiba destroyed them all. Every last Duel Monster card on Earth."

It was like experiencing an earthquake that only he could feel, like the ground beneath his feet had shattered and dropped away, even if the table and the blond man and the cards under his hands didn't shift a micron. "Kaiba?" Kaiba repeated, hardly able to hear himself over the roar of blood pounding in his ears.

"Yeah. Kaiba. _That_ Kaiba. The head of Kaiba Corporation." The clerk's hands closed into fists. "The man who's opened all those Kaiba Lands everywhere, the billionaire philanthropist himself. Kaiba's the one who did it. Who ended the game once and for all."


	3. Only one man

"I wouldn't--don't--that's--" _Impossible_, Kaiba managed to stop himself from saying in time, but the blond clerk obviously heard it anyway.

He smiled, a bloodless, humorless smile. "I know what you must have heard of Kaiba, what people think of him. Eccentric, that's what they call his attitude, he's rich enough to buy all the good press he needs. Most people never heard of his--_campaign_, and those that had, most of them have forgotten. Have tried to forget, and Kaiba doesn't do much to remind them, now."

Kaiba couldn't help but be fascinated, listening to the man speak. He had never heard his name pronounced with such abject, unforgiving hatred, except when he spoke it himself, referring to his late stepfather.

"I've heard that Kaiba Corporation once supported Duel Monsters," the clerk went on. "That they designed the major dueling technology, that Kaiba even might have played himself, once. But that would've been a long time ago. More than thirty years."

Thirty years. And here he was, thirty years from that time he knew to be true. "What happened then?" Kaiba found himself asking.

"Thirty years ago," the blond man explained, "Kaiba Corporation bought out Industrial Illusions, the producer of Duel Monsters. And then stopped production of the cards on the spot, and destroyed all the original prints. Even demolished Pegasus's paintings.

"But that was just the beginning. Making sure no more cards could be made wasn't enough for Kaiba," and he spat the name with more venom than before. "Not by a long shot.

"First he recalled all the unsold card packs and destroyed them. Here, in America, Europe, everywhere. Then he started buying out the surplus in used stores and the online markets. Cards sold in auctions, starter decks, complete collections, he'd buy them all up.

"Some people thought it was a business strategy. That he was driving up the value of cards by limiting the supply. Except he never sold any, and he didn't sponsor any games, didn't advertise the cards at all. Then Duel Monsters was barred from all Kaiba Lands--supposedly they'd held tournaments in the first couple parks that were built, but those arenas were turned into other games, and later people weren't even allowed to bring the cards onto the premises.

"Kaiba wasn't stockpiling collectible cards to sell later. He was destroying them. Incinerating every single card. First all the ones he bought up. Then he started making offers in the Kaiba Lands, in store chains partnered with Kaiba Corporation. Buying old Duel Monster cards back for double their going price, no matter their condition, and that price had risen fast after I2 went down. Kids who weren't playing anymore would dig up their old decks and turn them in, get a start on their college savings.

"But a lot of people were still playing, it continued to be the most popular game going. Though the play became pretty fierce. You'd duel with ante rules, usually, giving up your best card if you lost, and there'd be no way to get another one. Usually the winner would trade his weakest card, so at least the loser would still have a complete deck. Guys who owned more than a deck, hoarding cards they didn't play with, they'd be pretty despised. Most of the collectors sold their extras, made a mint.

"By then the serious collectors were refusing to sell to Kaiba. They'd realized what he was doing, that it wasn't anything to do with Kaiba Corporation's profits, that he wasn't simply trying to use the game to make money. Though Kaiba started buying through proxies, so some people sold to him by mistake, and he'd never allow a sale to be cancelled once it was made, would never return any card he got hold of.

"Then, at this big American dueling tournament in New York, a duelist accused their opponent of cheating to steal their rare card, and a fight broke out that became a major riot. And a couple kids got killed in it. After that a law ended up getting passed in America, banning Duel Monsters altogether, and there was no proof that Kaiba was backing the lobbies that supported the ban, but everyone knew he was. Especially when laws like it started getting pushed through here in Japan, they knew it was him.

"All duelists knew by then. That Kaiba didn't have a plan for Duel Monsters. That he was just trying to end it. Once and for all, so it would never be played by anyone ever again."

"Impossible," Kaiba breathed, and only realized after the blond man stopped his account to look at him strangely that he had spoken aloud. "I mean," he said, groping to make sense, when disbelief was ringing in his ears like he had taken a punch, "it's ridiculous, that..." His hands gripped around his deck were going numb, whitened where his fingers had tightened and the cards' edges dug into his flesh. He forced them to relax before he slipped and bent a card. "Absurd. This game was played by millions, around the world. Billions of cards. That only one man..."

The clerk gave a bark of laughter, as dark and grim as his smile. "You don't know Kaiba."

"And you do?" Kaiba snapped, unable to stop himself. "Know him?"

"No." The blond man shook his head. "I've never met him myself. Though, my parents..." He swallowed, looked down at the tabletop. Seemed to be gathering his rage, for when he began speaking again it was with even colder hatred than before. Kaiba understood that tactical direction of emotion; he had relied on it himself. And he had been the object of such antipathy before, but it was a weird thing now, to hear it focused at his name and yet to have no anger when the clerk looked at him, no realization. This man didn't understand who he was. Though Kaiba himself hardly understood it any better. What he had done. What he would do.

Only he never would, not this. Impossible.

"Kaiba kept all offers for buying cards open," the clerk continued. "But the real players, the true duelists, they wouldn't sell."

Kaiba nodded, knowing he never would himself. Even a mediocre duelist might have that much loyalty to their deck.

"Though the game wasn't legal in public anymore, you couldn't even trade in most places, much less play, they wouldn't give in. Even when Kaiba started raising the prices he would pay for cards.

"Until the offers became high enough that they stopped being payments, and started being rewards. Bounties. Even a weak card could earn you a small fortune. A rare card...

"After that--it wasn't only gamers who cared anymore. It wasn't only a game. I don't know if Kaiba hired some of the hunters personally, or whether they just came when the money got good enough. I've heard that he had ways to track the cards, maybe a satellite system, though people managed to hide pretty well from it if that were true. At any rate, however they did it, if they found you had a card--if they heard you had a whole deck--they weren't gamers, they didn't follow any rules. Any laws.

"And Kaiba didn't care. Oh, nothing would be traced to him--the card rewards weren't made public anymore, by then. Industrial Illusions had long been liquidated, Kaiba Corporation officially denied any involvement with Duel Monsters, had for several years. But everyone knew where the money came from. And Kaiba paid the same reward for a card no matter its condition, as long as it was intact enough to be identified--and if it weren't, there was still a price, as long as it could be proved to be genuine. It didn't matter what kind of damage. Ripped apart, slashed, cut into pieces. Burn marks. Bloodstains.

"My parents...my mother and father both were duelists. Some of the best. And they went up against Kaiba from the start, they weren't afraid of him. When the laws against games started getting passed, they organized protests, held competitions anyway. But that meant they were known--their cards were known. They traded, but they never sold any of theirs. They both had complete decks. Good decks, with lots of rare cards.

"I was six, when the break-in happened...the men who came had guns. And my parents, my mom and dad, they were... Both of them. The same night. The hunters ignored me, I wasn't what they were after--they knew where to find their decks. Took them--sold them.

"The guys who had come that night were caught later by the police. Amateurs, they got life for it. But even then, that young, I understood what had happened. Who'd really done it. Kaiba probably burned their decks himself, there were few enough left that he was doing it personally, by then. And some of those cards would have been the last of their kind.

"My aunt--she and her husband raised me, after that--doesn't like to talk about it. Doesn't like my uncle or their friends to talk to me about dueling, but she couldn't stop me. She never really tried. Because of my father, and my mother, and what it meant to them. By the time I was old enough, talking was all anyone could do anyway. All that was left.

"I play myself, now. Not the real game, of course. But I tried to show you these before," and the clerk took out a deck of playing cards with the same stylized knot pattern on the back that Kaiba recalled from the deck he had been shown in the shop. The man fanned a few hands out face-up on the table. Kaiba looked at them disinterestedly for a moment, hearts and spades, clubs and diamonds.

Then he frowned. It had been a long time since he had played a round of poker, but diamonds were all supposed to be red, weren't they, not sometimes green? And why were there two sixes of clubs, the markings arranged in such different patterns?

The clerk watched comprehension enter his expression and nodded. "Clubs are traps, diamonds are magic cards. Hearts are--"

"Low-level monsters. Sacrifices," Kaiba said, leaning over to study the cards closer. "And spades would be high-level monsters." With the underlying system explained, Kaiba could identify the design of the hands, interpret the arrangements. The ten of spades, with two spades pointing perpendicular to the others, that would be a special ability. And the queen of clubs, holding a net in her abstract arms...

"The tournaments are all secret, of course. And there's no books of the rules to study, you have to memorize them all, but I could teach you. It'll never be what your father played with that deck you're holding. But at least we're remembering. And someday Kaiba will be gone, and we'll recreate the real thing again. As well as we can."

"Someday," Kaiba echoed, staring down at the cards on the table.

"Like you said," the clerk said, "he's only one man. Even if he is Kaiba. Eventually--"

"Eventually," Kaiba growled, reached out and swept the doctored playing cards off the table, sending them twirling to the floor, a flutter of white and brown cardboard butterfly wings.

"Hey!" the clerk protested, leaping from his seat and diving for his cards. "What the hell is your problem, kid?"

Kaiba launched to his feet as well, his fingers clutched around his deck. "You're just going to wait. Sit here in this little shop with your fake cards and pretend to be a duelist. As if knowing the rules or remembering the cards means anything, when you've let them all be destroyed. You'll never be a true duelist, even if you had my deck. If Kaiba's a man, then challenge him--if Kaiba's a monster, then challenge him and win. But you'd rather leave it to time."

The blond man, crouched on the floor to retrieve his cards, was staring up at him. With fading anger but still no abhorrence, and Kaiba was almost, almost tempted to tell him who he really was, just to learn what the hatred in those brown eyes would feel like when it was aimed directly at him.

Instead he asked, "Why?"

The clerk blinked. "Why won't we--"

"No. Why would--Kaiba--you said, he was once a duelist himself. Why did he..." His deck felt too small, three cards short, the hard case with the Blue Eyes digging into his hip. "Everything you told me..."

"What made him do it? Why would a man hate a game that much?" The clerk shook his head, blond hair falling in his eyes as he straightened up, shuffling the cards in his hands back into order. "Because he's crazy. Maybe he is a monster. And...

"Like I said. My aunt won't bring up any of it at all, my uncle and the others...they'll talk about the cards. Not the other stuff. But--my mom and dad were duelists. They'd met Kaiba, before any of it started. And even if no one's told me straight, there's stories that go around--rumors. Myths, really. Maybe just things that got made up by people trying to understand.

"It would have been a while before I was born, over thirty years ago. Kaiba Corporation supposedly used to make accessories for the Duel Monsters, like I mentioned. Stuff like holographic imaging systems to bring the cards to life, and this was years before 3DV, so it must have been really crazy tech for its time. I don't know, that might only be urban legend. All of it would've been destroyed with the cards, anyway.

"So the story goes, Kaiba was designing a new card-play system in his lab one day, working with his brother. They were business partners or something, he and his brother. If you believe the stories, he was trying to make a magic effect real--I don't know, maybe he was crazy all along.

"But whatever it was, something went wrong. There was an accident. And his brother died."

_"What?"_

"Those who knew Kaiba before," the clerk went on, oblivious, "said he was never the same, after that. He was injured himself, burned, but that wasn't..."

Kaiba didn't know if the man stopped talking, or if he simply couldn't hear him anymore, from the sudden great distance he was speaking across. His mind had spiraled back, thirty-two years, two months, eleven days and however many hours it had been now--only a few hours ago, from his perspective--

_"Nii-sama!"_

But Mokuba had been behind the glass, safe--

But Mokuba had bolted up, gray eyes wide and panicked, and Kaiba had shouted at him to stop, to just keep monitoring, but he was already keying open the door to the lab--

White flames, blinding--

_"Nii-sama!"_ His brother was running towards him, his sneakers squeaking on the testing room floor--

Burning--

"Kid, are you okay?"

Kaiba's free hand found the tabletop, gripped the corner to keep himself standing. "Fine," he said, or thought he said, too far away to hear his own voice.

Maybe too far away for the clerk to hear it, either, because the man didn't look convinced. "Sit down," he said, set a hand on Kaiba's shoulder and pushed the chair against the back of his knees, so Kaiba folded into it, hunched and still hanging onto the table's corner with one hand, his deck in his other, as if either could anchor him.


	4. No one else

"Kid?" the clerk asked. Possibly genuine worry in his tone now, in his eyes. And still no hatred.

"Excuse me," Kaiba said, formally, digging his fingers into the table's wood as he strove to cross back over the yawning gap separating himself. "I just--remembered something."

"Uh-huh. Something more than you forgot to run the dishwasher, I take it."

_"Nii-sama!"_

Kaiba raised his head, met the clerk's concerned gaze steadily. "You were saying about Kaiba?"

"Yeah. Though that's pretty much it. He bought out Industrial Illusions maybe a year after his brother's death, and the rest--is history, that I just told you. Kaiba mentions his brother occasionally, dedicates all the Kaiba Lands he opens to him, I've heard, though I've never watched one of those speeches. But he never says anything about Duel Monsters in those. And I doubt he ever poured his heart out to the bounty hunters. So there's no way to really know _why_.

"But if he was working with the cards when he lost his brother--if he decided it was the cards that killed him, and not whatever experiment he was running..."

White fire, impossible magic.

_"Nii-sama!"_

Kaiba had moved temporally before he had been burned. But now he could taste the smoke in the back of his throat.

The clerk had trailed off again, was looking at him again like he was expecting Kaiba to say or do something, but what that might be, Kaiba couldn't imagine. Before he could ask, they were interrupted by a squealing rock guitar riff.

"I better get that," the blond man said, getting up. "Be right back." He turned the key and hurried out of the storeroom, closing the unlocked door behind him. The noise cut off as the clerk answered the phone, Kaiba deduced, hearing the low, unintelligible mumble of his conversation through the door.

Alone in the cramped little room, he closed his eyes, exhaled a long breath as if he could force the taint of smoke in his memory from his lungs. That fire--not part of the card's magic.

_"Something went wrong. There was an accident. And his brother..."_

When he returned to the past, it might not be to the exact time he left. Possibly a few minutes ahead, enough time for the flames to mostly burn out, so that he wouldn't be in the heart of that blaze.

A few minutes too late. By the time he returned, Mokuba would be--

_No_.

It would happen. It had already happened, over thirty years ago.

But there had to be a way to change that. Kaiba had never believed in fate, never accepted the demands of destiny. This could not be the only possibly future, not the only possible way. He would not allow it to be.

And yet it had happened. Would happen, will happen. This future he had made, that the cards had brought him to.

Kaiba dropped his deck on the table, stared down at it with his hands resting on either side. The last Duel Monster cards on Earth.

Really, that was unlikely. Even he wouldn't have been able to find all of them. Some duelists would have hidden theirs, at least their most precious cards, where no one could find them. As he had lied about his imaginary father doing. Though hidden cards, unable to be played, would they have any more worth than the blond clerk's absurd marked suits? The game was ended. His deck, however strong, was nothing, with no others to duel against. Powerless.

Kaiba withdrew the thin metal case from his pocket, flipped it open and removed the three Blue Eyes cards. But he hesitated before returning them to the deck where they belonged, holding them, fanned out, before his eyes. Three identical prints, overlapping, the white dragons silently roaring against one another.

Just cards. Thrown onto an open flame--white fire--they would burn in less than a minute, for all the unknown power within them.

Impossible, Kaiba had wanted to say. He would never do such a thing as what he had just been told, would never so completely end all of it... But he knew that wasn't true. He had destroyed one Blue Eyes already, ripped it to shreds. He might tell himself he wasn't now the same Kaiba Seto he had been then--but then, the Kaiba Seto of this now was not the same, either.

_"Nii-sama!"_

These cards, the dragons, had saved him before, the dream of them, the dream that Mokuba had held, too, that his brother hadn't allowed him to forget. But could that dream mean anything at all, without the one who had shared it with him?

No. He wouldn't allow it. Unacceptable.

But if somehow, in some timeline, he had failed; if Mokuba had been lost...

He closed his eyes. Not impossible, after all. All too terribly possible.

None of them had stopped him. Not any duelist in this future world true enough to try and succeed. To win against him. Instead they had just withdrawn. Set themselves safely in defense and waited for time to attack instead.

And Time had worked its special power, sacrificed a card and summoned him here.

Kaiba straightened up, opening his eyes. They might be powerless, all these pathetic players left. But he was not. His hand slid into his pocket, felt the curved metal band of the new card disk. He pulled it out, strapped it back on around his wrist. Then he swept together the three Blue Eyes cards, set them on top of his deck and returned it to his breast pocket.

The new disk only had slots enough for three cards, but three were all he would need.

Kaiba opened the storeroom door and walked out into the shop. The blond clerk waved at him, muttered something into a headset that was no more than a thin wire and then called over, "Hey, where're you going, kid?"

Kaiba had no reason to answer. But no reason not to, either. "Kaiba Corporation headquarters. I presume it's still located in the KC building downtown."

"'Still located'? Uh, yeah. But why do you want to go--oh, man, you're not planning to sell the deck, are you? I mean, Kaiba would probably give you your own island, if you wanted one--unless he decides it'd be easier to take them without paying at all--but, please--"

"I'm not going to sell any of them," Kaiba said.

"Oh. Then, why--"

"I'm going to end this. Once and for all."

"You're gonna--what?" The clerk vaulted the counter to scramble between Kaiba and the shop's exit, arms raised to bar his way. "What are you talking about?"

"It's not my father's deck," Kaiba said. "It's mine."

"Yeah, I figured that much out. Though how the hell--"

"Get out of my way."

"Kid--"

"Out of my way," Kaiba repeated, staring down at him and wondering why he didn't feel more furious at this mediocre man, this would-be duelist who had never had the chance to truly play.

The blond man sighed, lowered his arms and stepped aside. "I hope you know what you're doing, kid."

"You should hope I do, since no one else does," Kaiba told him, and strode for the exit, his duster flaring behind him. The bell on the frame chimed as he opened the glass door, the noise and heat of the street washing over him.

In the doorway, one foot over the threshold, he stopped, looked back into the shop. The blond man still stood in the aisle, brown eyes watching him with an emotion that might have been apprehension, or regret, or something else entirely.

There had been no turtle on the signboard, Kaiba knew, but he didn't recall what the shop's name had been. And it wasn't that the man's face was especially familiar. Except perhaps those eyes, though they watched him too calmly. And something about his voice, not the timbre so much as the way he spoke.

No reason to ask it. But Kaiba did anyway. "It's Jounouchi, isn't it."

"Eh?" The clerk blinked, then nodded. "Yeah, I'm Jounouchi Hiroto. Sorry, have we met--"

"No," Kaiba said, "we haven't," and he strode out of the shop onto the street, ignoring the blond man calling, "Nice to meet you, kid!" behind him.

Kaiba Corporation's tower was four kilometers from the game shop. He walked. Evening was falling and the city streets were more crowded than before, people hurrying home in a twilight washed out by bright artificial lights. The traffic was quieter than he was used to, he realized, the cars' engines roaring in softer pitches than those of the past.

He didn't look at any of the people he brushed by, their faces indistinguishable blurs. He didn't care if he recognized any of them anyway. Around his wrist the card disk's weight was a slight, unforgettable drag. Compared to the bulkier duel disk system, the device felt unnatural, too light, as if it were broken.

If he blinked, he saw white flames. Could smell the smoke.

Getting into Kaiba Corporation shouldn't be difficult, and once he was in the upper levels at least a couple of the old passages should still be open. Voiceprint readers and retinal scans shouldn't care that he was missing a few decades. And if he were stopped, he could show his deck. Or his face. Either should be enough to win him an audience with his opponent. Face to face with himself.

That would be enough. Kaiba Seto would recognize the card disk on his arm, but no security man or bodyguard should, or would suspect it was a weapon. He would easily have a chance. And a chance was all he would need.

Three Blue-Eyes White Dragons, brought to incredible life, and the cleansing blaze of their triple Burst Stream would be his victory.

The first floor of the KC building was open to the public, even as it had been thirty years ago, and the arcade that took up most of the floor was just as brilliant and loud. A crowd of kids were gathered around a virtual fighter stage, all cheering on a boy with thick black hair, and for the single moment Kaiba glimpsed him out of the corner of his eyes, before he turned to stare directly, the stranger might have been his brother.

Kaiba looked instead at the game, a fantasy knight in shining armor swinging his sword in a complicated maneuver against a giant robot. Mokuba would enjoy a game like that. Might invent one very like it, if the notion occurred to him.

He looked away. Touched his breast pocket where his deck sat above his heart, and the locket under his coat. He didn't tell himself it wouldn't happen; there would be no point. He already knew he would prevent it. Somehow.

He passed the arcade's open doors, approaching the security desk before the bank of elevators. Easiest to just present himself, claim he had an appointment. The tech division's turnover had always been so high there that it wouldn't be surprising if he didn't know the right names. He knew just the pitch of temper to present that would get him hurried along inside with minimal questions.

Just as he crossed under the circle of florescent lights around the desk, he heard a cough behind him, and a quiet voice said, "Seto-kun."

Kaiba stopped, turned around.

The man standing before him would be going on fifty, and showed it in the gray streaking his spiked hair, though his face was still round and youthful, mostly unlined. His violet eyes were raised to Kaiba's face, a long way up; he was shorter than half the kids in the arcade. But there was no hint of intimidation in his expression, no acknowledgment of their seeming difference. There never had been. Just understanding, as if merely looking at Kaiba he could read every intent.

He knew why Kaiba had come here, unmistakably. It had to be why he was here as well.

"Do you really believe you can do this, Seto-kun?" Yugi asked.


	5. That should never be

For a long moment Kaiba merely stared at Yugi, wondering if he should be surprised, or if he should have expected this. Something of the same confusion he saw in Yugi's older face, as if even prepared for this moment, knowing who he was about to confront, he hadn't figured out himself how he should feel about it. But then that was how it always was with him and Yugi, mirrors set facing one another; to look at him was to see his own distorted reflection, what might have been, what could be. Even now, with thirty years dividing them, and so much hatred, that hadn't changed.

"This way, Seto-kun," Yugi said, after a moment that could have spanned another three decades, and he walked to the arcade's doors, gesturing Kaiba to follow him. Kaiba did, before anyone at the security desk paid them any heed.

They found a dim corner of the arcade, away from the noise and lights and people, concealed behind the bulk of an old machine that looked like an early dueling stage but obviously could not have been. Not here. In the gaudy glows and shadows, Yugi studied Kaiba's face again, then ducked his head in a bashful manner more fitting to a boy than the man he had grown into. "It is you," he said, with a strange hoarse catch in his voice, or maybe that was just the rasp of age. "Hiroto-kun described you exactly, your eyes, your coat, and he swore you had shown him a Blue Eyes. It could've been no one else. But I still...after so long, I didn't think I dared believe anymore. Dared to hope."

"Hope," Kaiba growled. "Is that all you're doing now, Yugi?" Suddenly he knew what he was feeling, and it was neither surprise nor expectation, but anger, finally, vicious and overwhelming. He shoved the smaller man back against the wall, hard, and Yugi didn't resist, didn't even raise a hand in defense as Kaiba's fists knotted in his lapels, almost lifted him off the ground. "_How could you let this happen?_" Kaiba demanded. "You could have stopped it. You could have beaten--him. You were never afraid of me, you never hesitated to challenge me, you never lost to me--how could you let this happen?"

Yugi didn't try to break away, but nor did he look away, his head tilted up toward Kaiba, his eyes fearless, and grieving. "I'm sorry, Seto-kun."

"_Sorry,_" Kaiba spat, and dropped him, pushed him away, as if touching him further might contaminate. "Why? You must have seen what was happening. You must have understood, even before anyone else did. That time before, what I was before, you saw that clearly enough, and you didn't hesitate to crush me then, to destroy what I'd become. Why'd you lose your nerve this time?" _You must have known this time was worse..._

"I tried," Yugi said, and that Kaiba had not expected to hear. Yugi straightened up to all his meager height, and while the regret in his expression was predictable, it changed his face in ways Kaiba wasn't prepared for. Not a new, ready remorse, but an old sorrow, a guilt long lived with, permanently etched into the lines of his face. This was the meaning of age, to see your mistakes imprinted upon you, the history of all your faults written out on your skin.

"I tried once," Yugi said. "Years ago. Right after--Hiroto-kun told you what happened to his parents. I was angry, I was mourning. I thought I could do it then. I thought I was angry enough, righteously so. And I thought it might be the only way after all; I thought--I knew--that in some way _he_ wanted it over as badly as any of us. I thought I could do it. But when I was finally facing him--in the end, I couldn't kill a friend."

"A friend?" Kaiba laughed, harshly.

But Yugi just looked at him with all the patience learned over thirty years. "I know why you came to this building, Seto-kun, and I know what you're feeling. But could you really do it, at the last?"

Kaiba thought of the Blue Eyes, how the three dragons would look, rising up around him, with the blinding brilliance of the Burst Stream pouring from their open mouths. The cards might be destroyed, as the Time Wizard might have been. But to see them live, truly live, for that moment--and to remind Kaiba himself, at the last, what he had done, what he had ended. So that he would realize what he had become, if he had forgotten; so he would suffer, if he remembered, in that final instant.

"I will do it," Kaiba said, and almost laughed again. "Yugi, do you really think I'm too weak to be able to kill myself?"

"No. I wouldn't think that. Though you'll never be weak, Seto-kun," Yugi said, shaking his head. "But even so, I don't believe that you could kill Mokuba."

"Mokuba--" It caught in Kaiba's throat, but he forced it out, "Mokuba is dead. In this time. My experiment killed--"

But he stopped, because Yugi was looking at him, staring at him, wider-eyed than any adult, any old man, should be able to be, and it wasn't shock so much as sudden flooding understanding, so compassionate it might be pity. "No," Yugi said. "He told you, didn't he, Hiroto-kun told you what happened. Everything that happened."

"_Kaiba_," Kaiba rasped, "he said it was Kaiba, who destroyed the cards, who--it was Kaiba--"

"It was Kaiba," Yugi said. "Kaiba Mokuba. President of Kaiba Corporation, which he inherited after his older brother was declared dead. God, Seto-kun, I'm sorry. Hiroto-kun wouldn't have told you, he didn't know who you really were, he didn't understand."

"Mokuba," Kaiba said. "Mokuba didn't die."

"No." Yugi shook his head. "He didn't. He was injured in the explosion, but not severely, he got himself out of the hospital the same day to go back to your lab. He was waiting for you, Seto-kun. He told us about the experiment you had been doing with the cards, with the Time Wizard. And he knew you should have appeared again, by then, but you hadn't, so he waited.

"He kept waiting for you, long after you were officially declared dead, and he was acting president of KaibaCorp--he refused to accept the formal position until years after that. He was so young, but the company trusted him, and he managed it, he knew what he was doing, right from the start."

_Of course he did_, Kaiba might have said, if he could have found his voice. His brother had been beside him from the first day he had become CEO; he knew everything Kaiba did.

"It was exactly a year and a day after the accident, that Kaiba Corporation bought Industrial Illusions. Mokuba bought it, and gave the orders to shut it down. I think that might have been the day he decided you weren't coming back. I don't really know; by then he wasn't speaking to any of us much anymore. And everything that happened after that, Hiroto-kun told you already."

Had told him, but Kaiba hadn't heard. Hadn't understood, but it had to be a lie, now that he knew. A hoax, a trick, a joke. "No. He wouldn't. Mokuba couldn't--he's not me. He'd never do that. Become that."

"He won't," Yugi said, simply.

Kaiba stared at him, surprised to see the shallow lines of Yugi's face fold up into a smile, small but genuinely felt.

"That's why I'm here, Seto-kun. That's why I had to find you. I've been waiting for you, all these years. Hoping that when you appeared, I could find you, so I could give you this."

From his pocket, Yugi withdrew a small, flat, metal case, almost identical to the one Kaiba had brought. "Even Hiroto-kun has never seen this. I've never told him or anyone else. Only his father knew I had it, because he gave it to me. Less than a year before he died--he knew the danger they were in, and asked me to keep it safe."

Sliding up the metal lid, he thumbed out the card inside, his hands still moving with a practiced player's dexterity. For a single instant he gazed down at the card. Maybe the last one he had seen in years; his expression was so wistful it was painful.

Then he handed the card to Kaiba, who took it with barely a glance at the picture. He didn't need to read its name. He knew it could only be the Time Wizard.

Kaiba held the card so tightly between his fingers he almost bent it, resisting the urge to crumple it into a worthless ball and throw it down. "This was your hope? Everything was riding on this? It's useless. It will only bring me back to where I was," he told Yugi. "To the lab, in the middle of that accident. Back to the beginning of this. It won't change anything."

"No--it will change everything," Yugi said. "Seto-kun, don't you understand? This is the world you made. The future you brought into existence, by coming here instead of being there. You didn't die in the experiment--you just never returned. Because you haven't returned yet. You're here instead, but you need to go back."

"How do you know--"

"Kaiba--that is, Mokuba told me. The first months after, he was so hopeful. He explained the whole experiment to us in detail. He was sure there had just been a glitch, he thought it might have been a bug in one of the simulation programs. He was positive you'd be back any minute." Yugi shook his head, the motion slowed by sorrow. "He never lost faith in you, Seto-kun. Don't think that he did. I think even now he still believes in you. He just forgot how to believe in anything else. He couldn't blame you, so he blamed the cards instead.

"At the time none of us believed it. We thought you were gone for good. But later I started to realize what could have happened, what could have gone wrong. If you'd lost your Time Wizard, and had no way of getting back, then there would be a way to help you. It was the best chance, our best hope. Though after so long I'd almost given up--but then Hiroto-kun told me you were in his shop, and I knew the time had finally come.

"The moment you use that card, the instant you go back, then none of this--none of the last thirty-two years--ever happens. That's the hope in this card, that's why Jounouchi-kun entrusted it to me. This is what we've been waiting for, all this time. To make sure this time isn't, at all."

Kaiba looked down at the Time Wizard clasped in his fingers. "You think this all can be ended. Wiped clean." He shifted his gaze to stare past the card at his old rival. "Yugi, in Battle City, didn't you tell me that I couldn't truly create my future if I destroyed my past? The road we walk to the future is built on the past we've lived. But you've waited thirty years to destroy the future, for the sake of changing the past."

Yugi nodded. "You've never believed in destiny, I know, Seto-kun. I don't know if I do myself, even now, if I really can believe that there's anything that's truly meant to be. But I do know this--that there's some things that should never be.

"You said it yourself, that it never could have happened. You asked me why we did nothing. Why I didn't stop this. I couldn't stop this. I couldn't stop him, Seto-kun, not what he became. We tried, all of us. We all did we could for Mokuba, but in the end it wasn't enough. None of us could be what he needed. None of us could be his brother."

"Yugi..."

But as Kaiba spoke, the colored lights flickered, and then overhead lights clicked on, bathing the shadowed nooks and corners in bright harsh spotlights. The storm of electronic noise died abruptly as screens and holograms across the arcade froze, all paused at once, and then that silence was overwhelmed by the voices of all the gamers swelling in protest.

"Hurry, Seto-kun," Yugi said.

"What is this--"

"He knows I'm here. I would've been marked the moment I entered this building," Yugi said, not nervously, but urgently. "This is already longer than I was expecting it to take, he must have been busy."

"What do you--" Kaiba realized the buzz of the crowd was abruptly falling quiet around them, every complaint and question going mute, one by one, but for a few whispers, a few fingers pointing to the entrance.

"Use the card, Seto-kun," Yugi said, in a way that was neither commanding nor begging but demanded all the same. "Use it now. Go back to where you belong. And see that you make sure this now never is, and never will be."

Kaiba stared at him, stared at the Time Wizard. He raised his wrist with the card disk, and Yugi nodded, naked relief in his eyes.

"Yugi," said a voice behind him, a man's baritone that Kaiba didn't recognize.

But the look on Yugi's face, staring past him toward the arcade's doors, that sorrowing look he couldn't mistake. Even as Kaiba fitted the card into the slot, he turned around.

A man had entered the arcade, stood spotlit in a bright perfect circle. A tall man, Kaiba's height or close to, though with broader shoulders under his white double-breasted suit. Short black hair, pure sable not yet started to thin or silver, and a handsome, square-jawed face, though the illumination picked out a faint scar marring one cheek, the plastic sheen of an old burn.

A stranger's countenance, and yet in some ways it might have been the face Kaiba saw in the mirror. Or rather the face he used to see, the mask that had been shattered at Death-T that he had never tried to restore. Not quite the features themselves, but the uncompromising set of his chin, the calm brutality of his smile, that he couldn't help but recognize.

But gray eyes, instead of blue, and he knew that particular shade better than his own. Those gray eyes moved from Yugi to fix on him, and narrowed as his own would, and then widened, opened enough that even meters away, Kaiba could see the disbelief in them, and the madness, and the anguish.

It froze him, paralyzed him, to have those eyes stare at him like that, and for there to be nothing he could do, nothing that could make right what was wrong in that man's dead smile.

"Seto-kun," Yugi said, behind him, loud enough to carry throughout the unnaturally still arcade. "_Please_."

And the face of the man staring at him changed, subtly. Still a stranger's face, but suddenly in that stranger's too familiar eyes, desperate, helpless, overjoyed, there was hope. The same hope Kaiba had seen in Yugi's smile, that had been in the voice of the blond man at the shop; the hope that he now held between his fingers, pushing into the slot to activate its power.

As the card slid into the disk, and the bright fire flickered up around him, Kaiba saw the gray-eyed man open his mouth, saw his lips begin to shape the cry--

"Nii-sama!"

White tongues of flame. White walls. And gray eyes, staring, huge with worry.

Kaiba tore the burning duel disk off his wrist, threw it behind him as he dove forward. He caught Mokuba up in his arms and rolled with him, tucking his little brother's head against his chest and curling around him to shield him from the explosive blast. Against his back he felt a burst of heat and pressure, and a thud like a giant's stomp shuddered the walls of the lab.

Then it was quiet. Kaiba opened his eyes, as Mokuba struggled from his arms to sit up, then grabbed his shoulder, shook him urgently. "Nii-sama! Nii-sama! Are you okay? Nii-sama!"

Kaiba forced himself up onto his elbows, fighting back disoriented nausea. "Mokuba?"

"I'm fine, Nii-sama," Mokuba said, "I'm not hurt--are you okay?" He tugged at Kaiba's sleeve where the disk had been strapped, the material now a little scorched, flecked with ash. "Your coat! Did you get burned? What happened?"

Kaiba looked over his shoulder. The disk was mostly intact, insofar as it was still in a single piece, but the metal had been twisted like a dog's chew toy, a plume of smoke spiraling up from the remains. He wondered if there would still be a card--or two--in the middle slot. Probably not. A reaction that violent was what he would expect of simultaneous dual occupation of a single space and point in time. The two Time Wizards canceling each other out, like matter and antimatter.

He supposed he owed Yugi's mediocre duelist friend an undamaged card. Though the gifting of it might be difficult to explain. Maybe he should wait and make it a wedding present.

"The readings went crazy, as soon as you started putting the card in. There was this super-huge energy spike," Mokuba explained in a rapid patter, pushing up Kaiba's sleeve to check his arm for injury and sighing with relief when he saw there was none. "None of our computer simulations predicted anything like that, maybe I missed a variable somewhere. Your theory has to be right, I know it is."

Most of it had been, except for the parts that were entirely wrong. But he could blame that on modern science's flawed hypotheses concerning the immutable nature of the time stream.

Kaiba resisted the urge to take out his deck and see if the cards would be recognized. Mokuba already looked worried; no need to make him further doubt his brother's sanity. It was going to be hard enough, the next time he saw Yugi, to try not to think of the last time. Of that hope vivid in his aged man's face.

Odd that he could so clearly remember several hours that had never occurred. Would never occur. Will never occur.

_There's some things that should never be._

"What happened, Nii-sama?" Mokuba asked again.

Kaiba took hold of Mokuba's shoulder, studied his face, flushed with excitement, but unmarked. No burns. Just bright gray eyes in a round young face, watching him as closely as he watched them. No pain or anything but eager curiosity tempered by concern, though that fear was fading as he met his big brother's eyes.

"Nothing, Mokuba," Kaiba said, and smiled at his brother, putting the last of it to rest. "Nothing happened at all."


End file.
